Call­ing out ‘birther’ lies

On a Fri­day when many na­tional news out­lets led their pres­i­den­tial cam­paign sto­ries with Don­ald Trump re­fus­ing to ad­mit his claims that Pres­i­dent Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States are false, the Tri­bune story pub­lished in The Sun failed to even men­tion it. Even Mr. Trump’s cam­paign later ad­mit­ted that the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee be­lieves the “birther” lie he fo­mented is not true.

This is one of the most bla­tant lies Mr. Trump has ever told, and The Sun re­fuses to hold him ac­count­able, de­spite cov­er­ing for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton’s North Carolina rally where she made prom­i­nent men­tion of the is­sue (“A recharged Clin­ton vows sharp vi­sion,” Sept. 16).

This fol­lows The Sun’s fail­ure sev­eral weeks ago to write even one word in print about Ms. Clin­ton’s Reno speech call­ing Mr. Trump out for court­ing bla­tant white su­prem­a­cists and racists and in­clud­ing them in his cam­paign.

The so-called “birther” is­sue, cyn­i­cally used by Mr. Trump to gain trac­tion with racists and boost his elec­tion chances, is an early and key in­di­ca­tor of his un­trust­wor­thi­ness and his propen­sity to ca­su­ally tell the big­gest lies. It re­veals his ba­sic lack of abil­ity and qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be pres­i­dent. Yet The Sun con­tin­ues to ig­nore these is­sues. Amaz­ing.